Aztec god of war full#

It is no accident that this statue is missing its body images of Coyolxauhqui often depict her as nothing more than a decapitated head with closed eyes.

Aztec god of war full#

Coyolxauhqui and her brothers either killed Coatlicue, or were just about to when Huitzilopochtli emerged from the womb “in full war regalia.” In the latter interpretation, the armed and armored Huitzilopochtli defeated his rival siblings and saved his mother. There are varying interpretations on what happened next. Coyoloxauhqui gathered her 400 brothers, the Centzonhuitznahua, and launched an attack on her mother. When Coatlicue’s daughter Coyolxauhqui found out about her mother’s unusual pregnancy, she flew into a rage. Quatlique who was a virgin, took a small quantity of white feathers and placed them in her bosom, from which she conceived without having known man, and there was born of her Vchilogos. On a stopover near a place called Coatepec, During this journey, the Mexica (who would one day become the founders of the Aztec Empire) built temples to their patron god Huitzilopochtli. The Virgin Birth of HuitzilopochtliĪ story related in the Codex Ramirez told of the Mexica’s exodus from their ancestral home of Aztlan. In a strange twist of fate, only the fall of the Aztec Empire would be able to reunite them. In the end, Coatlicue was simply a lonely mother who longed to see her child again. Huitzilopochtli was central to Coatlicue’s story, from her virginal pregnancy to the ensuing battle between her children. Family TreeĬoatlicue’s mythology was interwoven with that of her son. Her other 400 children, the Centzonhuitznahua, were the gods of the southern stars. While Coatlicue had many children, the two most illustrious were Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec god of war, and his sister Coyolxauhqui, who famously tried to murder Coatlicue. This use of Aztec iconography suggested that Coatlicue had been dismembered, with the twin head snakes possibly representing gouts of blood. She was commonly portrayed with a face of serpents in place of a human head, and her hands were likewise replaced with snakes. The statue currently resides at the National Anthropology Museum in Mexico City, Mexico.Īside from her skirt, Coatlicue also wore a necklace of alternating hands and human hearts. As was typical of Aztec sculptures, all sides (including the bottom of the base) of the statue were decorated. Standing nearly 9 feet tall, this Coatlicue statue is one of the Aztec Empire's largest surviving sculptures.

In fact, one of the most famous Aztec sculptures depicted her wearing a skirt made of rattlesnakes. AttributesĬoatlicue was traditionally portrayed wearing a skirt of writhing snakes.

Another was Cihuacoatl (“Snake Woman”), a fertility goddess connected to sweat baths, midwives, and women who died in childbirth. One such aspect was Toci (“Our Grandmother,”) a figure associated with healing and war. In Nahuatl, Cōātlīcue’s name literally means “Snakes-Her-Skirt.” While many scholars have translated the name less literally as “She who has a skirt of snakes,” some historians have suggested that the skirt itself was the subject of the name, rather than the woman wearing the skirt.Īs was common practice amongst the Aztec pantheon, Coatlicue went by multiple names with each representing a different aspect of her divinity.